Environment

Our Commitment

We recognise that David Jones has an obligation to adopt environmentally sustainable practices, to continually reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and to ensure the responsible use and re-use of natural resources.

Whereas David Jones has previously focused on minimising its impact on the environment, going forward we are committed to transforming our relationship with the environment, rather than simply taking steps to reduce our environmental footprint.

We will meet this commitment by continuing to invest in programs and activities that optimise our use of energy, water and natural resources and by considering new ways of doing business to support a transition to the low-carbon economy of the future.

This is our third Environment Strategy and a continuation of work that commenced in 2006, when our first energy efficiency and waste minimisation programs commenced.

Our Stakeholders

Development of our Environment Strategy has been informed by feedback from our customers and employees. We have also consulted with a range of internal and external experts who are working towards the common goal of environmental sustainability.

As a result of consultation conducted in 2012 and again in 2015, we know that most of our employees and customers rate environmental concerns as being personally important to them. We also know that they expect David Jones to continually improve our environmental performance.

Interviews conducted with some of our key landlords, strategic partners and industry associations also tell us that many of the organisations we do business with are taking steps to respond to similar feedback they are receiving from their stakeholders, with some transferable programs that David Jones could adopt.

In bringing all of this feedback together, we believe that we have developed a strategy that genuinely responds to what is most important to people who care about the environment.

Our Approach

The next iteration of our Environment Strategy is informed by what our stakeholders are telling us is most important to them in relation to our environmental key focus areas.

We defined these key focus areas in 2012 on the basis of the size of our impact and the level of our influence. In order of priority, our key focus areas are consumption of electricity and natural gas, reloads of synthetic gas used in air conditioning and refrigeration, fuel usage from transport and corporate travel, waste management, packaging, paper usage and water consumption.

The scope of our Environment Strategy is David Jones’ own direct impacts from our stores, offices and fulfilment centres. Our indirect environmental impacts are covered in our Ethical Sourcing Strategy, which aims to identify risks to the environment that may exist along our supply chain. Both are five-year strategies.

We will continue to invest in technology and drive behavioural change to improve energy efficiency with the aim of further reducing electricity consumption, which represents 90% of our total greenhouse gas footprint.

We will also take additional steps to manage and reduce emissions from other sources such as natural gas consumption, recharges of synthetic gases used in refrigeration and air conditioning, and fuel used by our own small fleet of trucks.

As an iconic Australian brand, we also believe that it is important that David Jones supports broader action on climate change. This support might take a number of forms such as moving towards renewable energy over time, supporting accredited carbon offset programs as part of our community investment program, or standing with other large companies as a voice for change in multi-stakeholder campaigns.

We will continue to implement a number of existing programs and add some new initiatives to our plan with the aim of further reducing our impacts on the natural environment in the four key areas of waste, packaging, paper and water.

We still have some work to do to optimise our recycling and diversion programs for paper, plastic and food waste. We will also encourage greater industry investment in bioreactors, so that we can divert even more of our waste from landfill.

As a signatory to the Australian Packaging Covenant, we will continue to develop sustainable packaging solutions with our private label suppliers and reach out to like-minded branded suppliers who are also seeking to improve packaging design. This will include a review of our carry bags program, which will investigate the viability of moving away from plastic bags over time.

In addition to packaging, paper is another way in which David Jones could reduce resource depletion and waste generation. To date, we have identified more than 50 opportunities to reduce paper usage and we are gradually working through that list.

And finally, while we are not a big consumer of water in comparison to other large organisations, we have commenced a program to more accurately monitor water usage and address identified leaks, to help progressively reduce water usage.

To ensure the success of projects we plan to implement in terms of energy, water and waste, we need to engage internal and external stakeholders. We will do this through a range of channels to ensure that our employees, contractors and service providers understand what we are doing and how they can support our objectives.

A key element to this approach is to encourage business owners to consider the environmental impact of their design, procurement and investment decisions and talk with our service providers to get the best out of our agreements with them.

We also plan to promote environmental sustainability by engaging in collaborative initiatives with other industry players such as WWF and the Green Building Council of Australia, and engage our supply chain through our ethical sourcing team.

And finally, reporting our environmental footprint has become as important as reducing it. So we plan to invest in an environmental reporting system so we can provide more information, more frequently, more efficiently.

This system will also support us in meeting our mandatory reporting obligations, help us to expand the scope of our voluntary reporting program and aims to align with the group reporting framework to be developed with Woolworths Holdings.

We will communicate this information through a range of internal channels (such as quarterly environmental scorecards) and externally through our website.